It is well known that heat can be a problem, and that overheating can lead to failures of components such as electronics. This is particularly true with enclosed, largely airtight payloads filled with electronics and other gear.
As shown in FIG. 1, enclosed volume 100 is bounded by a shell that has an exterior skin 108 and interior skin 106. Within the enclosed volume is a hot spot 102 and interior air 104. Conventional cooling techniques typically rely on air transfer (e.g. fans) to cool down hot spots. But air is a poor transfer medium, and such cooling techniques are sometimes insufficient. Meanwhile, if the enclosed volume 100 is in an environment (e.g. airborne at high altitudes) where the exterior air 110 is much colder than the interior air, the much colder exterior air 110 could be used to cool down the hot spot. This however, requires an efficient means of transferring heat from hot spot 102 to interior air 104 to interior skin 106 to exterior skin 108 to exterior air 110.
One particular problem in this transfer is that interior air 104 is a poor heat conductor. Rather than directing heat from hot spot 102 efficiently to the interior skin 106, where it can be then transferred to exterior air 110, heat tends to disperse throughout all available interior air 104. Not only does this lead to unreliable cooling of the hot spot, but the interior air 104 also heats up, further leading to its inability to provide cooling to the hot spot 102 and other components in the interior of the enclosed volume.
Accordingly, it would be desirable if there was a system for more reliably cooling the interior of an enclosed volume, including the cooling of hot spots in the volume such as electronics equipment.